Exploding Penguin -> RE: Mercenary: The Unjustly Labeled Class (4/24/2013 22:11:17)
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@drekon: Thanks for catching that, I was in somewhat a rush to publish the post and may have made a few typos. I fixed it so it now says "unblockable" instead. While merc can't replenish it's EP, it's quite a task for the opponent to remove it all. With minimal HP and generator at any level, it'll always take 2 emps, 3 atom smashes (unless you're absolutely strength abusing), and/or 3 assimilations. Either way, the only way of quickly removing a merc's energy is through EMP, which at high levels can cost a pretty fair sum of EP to use. Also, it doesn't give rage and takes an entire turn. Supposing BHs/CHs EMP me 2 times to take away all my energy, they'll spend around 30 energy total, and sacrifice 2 turns to do so. Keep in mind that those 2 turns also don't grant them rage while my 2 turns will. 3 Atom smashes will result in a risk of being blocked, a small sum of energy consumed, and no rage gain for 3 turns, which is quite a lot. 3 Assims may be worth it, but it just takes too long and the highest an opponent will probably get on a merc would be 2 assims. Therefore, I don't find the lack of ability to renew EP restricting at all because it simply costs too much for the opponent to go that route in a battle. One advantage merc has is that less people play it. This results in less opponents knowing how to counter merc builds since they have less experience with it, which is somewhat ironic. Because merc is conceived as UP, the merc players gain a slight advantage because of the lack of other mercenary opponents which others can practice on. Like frogbones, I enjoy playing a class/build that requires on-spot thinking; not like those BH focus builds who can simply rely on block luck for a large portion of their wins. I typically avoided those fast mainstream builds (except in the golden yeti tournament), and spent my time developing my own builds. Most of these builds took a lot of time to win but yielded a fairly high win ratio, so I was more than satisfied with this way of playing ED. Even though focus may seem like the only build anyone uses, I like it not because it's mainstream, but because it requires a different strategy for nearly every fight based off of the opponent. Of course, this lost some of its meaning on classes such as BH which just charge through opponents' HP with smoke and their only real defense is based off of their block luck and blood lust. I always dreaded fighting mass BHs back in delta because there were so many of them and they were really predictable and monotonous, but not once did I dread fighting a focus BM, because each one played differently and wasn't nearly as predictable as most other opponents.
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